Sims

Another write back feature we have for Sims.net is the ability to create Sims System Users from your staff data. It’s not commonly used, but if you want your staff members to automatically have access to Sims, then Salamander Active Directory can create the users in Sims. This includes assigning group membership and capturing the generated password. It can also set the user to be inactive once they leave.

As Capita charge us a per school fee for write back, then there is an additional charge for writing back to Sims. This is the same charge as for writing back emails etc, so there’s no extra cost if you are already using that.

For more information, or if you want us to set this up, then please contact support.

This is something we’ve had for several years, but I don’t think that it’s very widely known. Salamander Active Directory can write back to Sims.net. Typically this is used for email addresses, user defined fields, telephones and parental consent. For emails and telephones we can set specific types, e.g. work email, as well as bulk operations on all of a person’s emails/telephones such as removing main or primary, or even deleting them all if you want to start afresh.

We can do this for pupils, staff, contacts and applicants.

As Capita charge us a per school fee for write back, then there is an additional charge for writing back to Sims. If you use a different MIS then please speak to us as there are some write back operations we can do with other systems.

For more information, or if you want us to set this up, then please contact support.

Salamander Active Directory can now upload and update photos in Google Apps for Education and Google Apps for Work.

It can pull the photos directly from your MIS/SIS, whether Sims, Facility, Progresso, iSAMS or any of the other systems we support, and then push them into Google Apps.

It can do this as a one-off process, or on a continuous basis, checking to see if they have changed if your process is that users are not allowed to update their own photos.

This is a nice addition to our Google Apps for Education integration joining the ability to update users, synchronize timetables to Google Calendar, create & update groups and manage Google Classroom. All linking from Sims and any other MIS.

Using the timetable data from your MIS, whether it is Sims, Progresso, Facility CMIS, iSAMS or any other MIS, Salamander Active Directory can update staff members’ and pupils’ Google Apps for Education calendars with their timetable. These calendars are updated each time Salamander runs, allowing the calendars to remain up to date with any changes to an individual’s timetable.

The events can be put into the main calendar or in a named calendar as below.

This example is for a staff member so the subject is configured to be the name of the teaching group as a staff member will likely teach multiple classes for the same subject. For pupils it would usually be configured as the subject name as they typically only have one teaching group for each subject.

Salamander Active Directory can also synchronize other types of timetables from Sims and other MIS including:

Using the timetable data from your MIS, whether it is Sims, Progresso, Facility CMIS, iSAMS or any other MIS, Salamander Active Directory can update staff and pupils’ Exchange calendars with their timetable. These calendars are updated each time Salamander runs, allowing the calendars to remain up to date with any changes to an individual’s timetable. This works with any version of Exchange both on premise in the school, or Exchange Online including Office 365.

This example is for a staff member so the subject is configured to be the name of the teaching group as a staff member will likely teach multiple classes for the same subject. For pupils it would usually be configured as the subject name as they typically only have one teaching group for each subject.

An example of an event.

Appointment Categorisation

Events can be categorised to suit your needs. Here we have events which are categorised by Subject, but this could equally be the Year of the group or the Room.

Cover Timetables

The cover timetables can also be synchronised, allowing users to easily see what cover has been assigned to them day to day.

Other Timetables

Salamander Active Directory can also synchronize other types of timetables from Sims and other MIS including:

I’ve just added the ability to filter staff by surname in our free PhotoExport utility for Sims.

The reason was because a user was getting an out of memory exception loading all the staff photos at once. The Sims API we are using loads all the photos into memory before we can save them, so if they are large then it can take a huge amount of memory.

Now, with the surname filter, you can export them by initial letter of the surname, which will hopefully keep the memory usage low enough to complete. If there are any particularly large photos, you can even filter by more than one letter, but I would start with one and then refine if you hit any further problems.

/filter:surname An optional parameter which if present will filter staff based on their surname. You can either type the start of the surname or a T-SQL filter
e.g. /filter:j will only export photos for staff whose surname begins with j
e.g. /filter:j%s will only export photos for staff whose surname begins with j and also has an s in it. Note in this case. the s can be anywhere after the j and not necessarily at the end of the name.